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Ahmedabad: A 33-year-old Dalit man who wanted to ride a horse for his pre-wedding procession here got police protection to avoid any ‘untoward incident’, The Indian Express reported.
A team of 145 police personnel arrived in Gadalvada village of Banaskantha district’s Palanpur tehsil to escort Mukesh Parecha’s wedding procession on Thursday.
A lawyer by profession, Mukesh Parecha turns out to be the first in the Scheduled Caste to arrange for a varghodo, the ritual of a groom riding a horse.
Parecha’s bucket list for wedding topped his plan to seek police protection for varghodo, fearing untoward incident.
On January 22, he submitted an application to the Banaskantha district superintendent seeking police protection for riding horse.
‘In our village, people from the Scheduled Caste have never carried out a varghodo . I will be the first to carry out the varghodo. And there is every possibility of (an) untoward incident. And therefore, it is a request to grant us police protection,’ Parecha’s application stated.
The procession took to the village ways with the groom riding a horse amid tight police security.
Police Inspector K M Vasava was quoted as saying: ‘We had deployed a bandobast of 145 personnel, including three sub-inspectors and one police inspector. The procession was held peacefully.’
Parecha, who practises law at Banaskantha district court, said that the procession was peaceful but once he got off the horse and sat in the car somebody threw stone at his car.
‘Nothing happened as I rode the horse. But after I got off the horse, following the procession, sat in my car, and had barely covered 500 metre, someone threw a stone at our vehicle. Then, the Police Inspector (K M Vasava) himself drove the car while Vadgam MLA Jignesh Mevani, who was also present at the spot, sat inside,’ he reportedly said, adding that he would lodge complaint regarding stone pelting shortly.
However, Inspector Vasava, checking the visuals from a drone camera deployed by the police for security, said that there was no stone pelting.
‘The procession was carried out peacefully. But since they made the allegation, I drove the groom’s car and dropped them to the village where the marriage was to take place,’ the officer said.